Hello! Looking for Land in Virginia for Homesteading

Hello everyone! My husband and I are a young couple looking for a piece of land to buy in Virginia within the next year. We are looking for around 10-20 acres (or more, if the price is right), preferably as close to the mountains as possible and within a 5 hour driving distance from Washington DC. We lived in the area for a long time for school and work, and have been traveling for the past 5 years thinking about where to settle down. We are self-employed, and rely on good internet for our jobs, which makes finding land a bit difficult as we don't want to rely on satellite internet. Anyways, I'm excited to contribute on here as I've been lurking around for a while getting great ideas from all of your posts. We are really interested in gardening, foraging, food forestry, health, self-sufficiency and building our own house, if possible. I am looking forward to finally owning land and starting with all of those things!

The first step in our journey is to find the right land. Land with a house is a real possibility, but we are trying to be mortgage free. If the house is livable for us and the land is really nice all for under 150k, then a mortgage would be alright perhaps, as we can pay it off within a few years. If we buy land separately and build a house ourselves, then we would like to find land for under 30-40k. These are our issues at the moment, and I am happy to be a part of this community. Nice to meet you!

Hi Kristina, welcome to Permies! Glad you're here.

Have you looked at Landwatch or LandandFarm? They're pretty good resources for looking at land from the couch that meets your criteria. My wife and I found our little place on land watch several years ago. It was nice to be able to spend some time looking at hundreds of parcels from home and weeding out the ones that didn't fit our needs. I want to offer a tip, and if you see some plots that you really like, look at the aerial view on google maps and see what's next door or down the street. We eliminated dozens of properties doing this. One I recall really looked great, and the price was even better, and before making the 2 or 3 hour drive to see it in person, I looked at the aerial view. It was right next door to the county fairgrounds and the circle dirt track! Yikes, no wonder it was priced to sell. We wanted rural with privacy and quiet, and that property was none of those, but the pictures of the land on the websites sure did make it appear it was rural and private. Hope this helps!

James Freyr wrote:Hi Kristina, welcome to Permies! Glad you're here.

Have you looked at Landwatch or LandandFarm? They're pretty good resources for looking at land from the couch that meets your criteria. My wife and I found our little place on land watch several years ago. It was nice to be able to spend some time looking at hundreds of parcels from home and weeding out the ones that didn't fit our needs. I want to offer a tip, and if you see some plots that you really like, look at the aerial view on google maps and see what's next door or down the street. We eliminated dozens of properties doing this. One I recall really looked great, and the price was even better, and before making the 2 or 3 hour drive to see it in person, I looked at the aerial view. It was right next door to the county fairgrounds and the circle dirt track! Yikes, no wonder it was priced to sell. We wanted rural with privacy and quiet, and that property was none of those, but the pictures of the land on the websites sure did make it appear it was rural and private. Hope this helps!

Thank you, James! I am still in the researching phase, so those websites and your advice are really helpful. I am still traveling at the moment, but will commence into seriously considering properties/land when I get back to the area in October. My husband and I are too looking for something quiet, so I would like more acreage. Nice to hear that you found something!